Page 20 of All Hallows Game

“Bullshit,” I huffed, eyeing the shadows of mausoleums behind the spire-topped building. No monster. No trace of the therapist’s soul, either, which was worrying. “She cares, she’s just scared and grieving. Are you in there?” I jerked my chin at the graveyard.

“No, I’m here,” he deadpanned.

“Lo and fucking behold,” I cried, scattered a bird from the tree beside us. “Was that humour I heard from you, Miz?”

He speared me with a glare, kicking a twig out of his path so aggressively that it shot into the side of a tomb. “Shut up.”

“Or what?” I challenged. “What you gonna do if I don’t shut up? What you gonna do if I keep brainstorming ways to get our girl back because she clearly misses us every bit as much as we miss her? What then, huh?”

“You don’t want to push me, Torment,” he replied in a voice as dark as the flickers of magic that kept escaping his usually ironclad control.

I let a slow smile stretch across my face. “Pretty sure I do, Misery.”

Air whooshed past my face and my grin widened as he slammed my body into the hefty trunk of a tree, hard enough to punch a grunt from me.

“She doesn’t care about us,” Miz snarled, teeth bared. His breathing came faster, and while he made a convincing display of anger, I knew it was hurt that drove him. “You heard her that night. We are nothing. She feels nothing.”

“She just watched her best friend get murdered, and she was forced to watch as Nightmare took control of you. Emotions were high; of course she lashed out.” I reached up to touch his face, thumbs stroking his cheeks, but he caught my wrists in brutal hands and ripped them away, pinning them to the tree above me.

“Don’t touch me,” he rasped.

“That might be what you want, but it isn’t what you need.” I didn’t fight the hands pinning my arms above me. “Why are you so determined to push us away, Miz? You need us more than ever. Nightmare wants this—she wants us fighting, she wants you alone so you’re easier prey. Stop pushing and let me in.”

His hands tightened on my wrists. His upper lip curled back. “I can’t.”

“Why?”

“Because I’ll kill you, too!” he yelled, so loud that the woods captured his voice and echoed it back to us. It rang in my ears, cutting through my rib cage right into my soft heart.

Miz ripped himself away, tension running through his whole body as he stalked through the woods. I caught up to him in two steps and grabbed his rigid shoulder, spinning him at the same time I brought my arms around him.

“Don’t,” he choked out, starting to shake.

I held on tighter, not letting him budge an inch.

“I’ll kill you too,” he snapped, struggling against my hold. “Don’t you get it? You know what happened right here, you know what she made me do, and now they’re all gone. They’re all dead because of me, and if I let you close, she’ll take over again and by the time I come out of it, you and Death will be dead. Why won’t you listen? You need to stay away from me.”

“Not gonna happen. I love you, you stubborn, selfless bastard, and if you think I’m going anywhere, you’re severely underestimating how stubborn I am.”

“Are you trying to die?” he muttered, but the tension gradually bled from his body until he melted into me, his arms coming up to pull me closer.

I scoffed. “Been there, done that, and you know me, Miz. I never repeat a mistake.”

“Yet you wear that crime to fashion every day,” he drawled with heavy scathing.

“Hey, fuck you, this shit is vintage. It’s worth a fortune now.”1

“Worth a fortune to who? Danny Zuko?”

I yanked a lock of messy white hair. “First of all, fuck you. Second, should I get a fifties pompadour?”

“God, no.”

I laughed, my fingers busy working out the knots from his rat’s nest. Miz had so much hair, it made a disastrous mess when he hit a low period. “Not even a wig? I could wear it in the bedroom. You could wear a Pink Ladies jacket and call me stud…”

“The only time I’d ever call you stud is if I got desperate enough to sell you at a cattle market.”

“I’d fetch a pretty fortune,” I said with a smirk, eyeing the woods around us. They always seemed to be dark, these woods, every bit as unsettling as the worst places in Death’s domain. Like Nightmare’s presence had stained the very earth here. No monsters so far, though. Not even a wild animal or a half-eaten carcass. Whatever killed Cat’s therapist, it was nowhere to be seen.

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